


What Dreams May Come

by Lenore



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Caretaking, Dreams, Episode Tag, Episode s01e10 Number Crunch, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Near Death Experience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-02
Updated: 2012-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-28 18:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/310683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lenore/pseuds/Lenore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A coda for Number Crunch. John's past, present and future blur together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Dreams May Come

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my dear [](http://no_detective.livejournal.com/profile)[**no_detective**](http://no_detective.livejournal.com/) for doing her usual excellent job of beta reading.

One of John's earliest memories is learning to swim, a patchwork of sensations: the aqua dazzle of the pool, warm arc of sun across his bare skin, bite of chlorine in his mouth, and his mother, the white-gold strands of her hair lifting in the breeze, her laughing mouth, her arms wide flung and encouraging. _Come on. You can do it. That's my boy._ It's one of his only memories of her.

He's always loved the water, but he has no idea how he got here now, so deeply submerged that everything is cold and dark. His lungs burn, and it's tempting to linger. Let go. It would be so easy, except easy isn't how he does things. Fight. That's what he's made of.

The way back takes all his strength, up and up until he's exhausted. _Come on. You can do it._ No matter how hard he struggles, though, everything stays chilly and black around him. His lungs are watery and weak, and he's beginning to think he might not make it when he finally breaks the surface and emerges into the light.

He squints, shading his eyes. The sky is a steep, cloudless arch. Rough outcroppings of rock lumber up out of the ocean. He knows this place. He's been here before.

On shore, it takes a moment to get his bearings, and then he can feel the wet sand between his toes, the heavy fall of sunlight on his shoulders. There's something cold deep inside him, a twisting pain in his gut, but if he concentrates on the light kiss of warmth on his skin, he can almost pretend it away.

There's someone waiting for him on the beach. He expects it to be Jessica—this is their place—but as he gets closer, he can see that it's Finch. After a moment's consideration, he decides he's okay with that. He misses Jessica, but he's glad to see Harold.

"Nice of you to join me, Mr. Reese," Finch says dryly. _At last_ hovers unsaid in the air. He tosses John a towel.

John grins as he catches it. "Harold. Aren't you a bit over-dressed for the beach?"

Finch perches on a lounge chair in his three-piece suit; a drink with an umbrella sits on the table next to him, incongruously. "I'm perfectly comfortable, I assure you, Mr. Reese."

He says it primly, but John doesn't miss the sidelong glance darted his way, at the trunks clinging low on his hips. In New York, John has many reasons to tread carefully—the fact that Harold will never again be software engineer of the month taught him that—but here, the possibility of consequences seems very far away. He's free to say, do whatever he wants.

"I'd hate for that fine tailoring to get ruined." He drops his voice to a rough whisper.

Finch stills in surprise. "And how might that happen, Mr. Reese?"

John smiles wolfishly. "I might get you wet."

Finch watches John's approach, not blinking. He's often reminded John of his namesake, and never more so than now, bright-eyed and ready to take flight. John bends over Finch's chair, closer, closer, until Finch's hand comes up and lands on his arm. John doesn't know if this is an invitation or a warning, and he doesn't care. Not when Finch's mouth is so—

The pleasant warmth of the sun deserts John in a rush, and suddenly he's too hot and too cold, all at once. Only the steady pressure on his arm remains. He works his eyes open with some effort. Finch. That's all he can make out. Everything else is a blur, although he does catch the antiseptic whiff of hospital.

 _Where?_ He can't manage to get it out.

Finch anticipates him. "You're somewhere safe, Mr. Reese."

It's a predictably vague answer, and if John had any strength at all, there would be an amused smile on his mouth. Finch may be a very private person, but he can hardly keep John's own location a secret from him. They really need to have a talk about the difference between circumspection and paranoia—but that will have to wait until John is capable of more than three seconds of consciousness at a time. For now, if Finch says he's safe, then John believes him.

He sinks back under, with Finch's hand still on his arm, like an anchor.

* * *

The stink of tar rises up from the roof in the sweltering Cairo heat. There is broken glass beneath John's stomach that crunches with his slightest movement. Through the scope of his sniper's rifle, he spies into the apartment across the street, where a family is ready to sit down to their midday meal. John knows this place. He's been here before.

It's a nightmare.

In the way of nightmares, John is two people: the one who is in the moment with his finger on the trigger and the one who knows everything that comes afterward, powerless to change any of it. The target is Mostafa Bostamy, a professor of mass communications at Cairo University, with a wife, Aziza, and two children, Halima and Nassor. Bostamy has ties to Al Quaida and is collaborating with a group planning another attack on New York. At least, this is what John has been told.

Any moment now, a stranger's disembodied voice will come over the comm—it belongs to someone at command-control, but John never thinks of that voice as a person, simply as _orders_. Any moment, it will tell him to shoot, and he will, because that's what a good soldier does. Because he trusts the source of the information that's brought him here, a woman at a computer five thousand miles away.

The man in the moment has no idea that Cara Stanton is for sale to any government willing to pay her price, that she's manufacturing misinformation to suit her clients' purposes, that she's turned him into an unwitting mercenary. Any moment now Mostafa Bostamy's family is going to watch him die for the high crime of making a blog post calling for free elections. By the time John figures this out, it will all be far too late.

A crackle comes over the comm, and the voice follows, but it's not the one he's expecting. "Stand down, Mr. Reese. I'm afraid we've received some bad intelligence. This man isn't the threat we believed him to be. Stand down, and come home."

The man in the moment doesn't know that voice, has no reason to trust it, but he does so instinctively, lowering his weapon and reversing his steps, walking away without any senseless carnage to regret for the rest of his life.

"Mr. Reese."

John wakes to Finch's voice.

He manages a tired, crooked smile. "What happened to John?"

Finch is bent over John's bed, eyeing him with concern. He straightens at this. "I see you're feeling better," he says, deadpan. There are lingering lines of worry around his eyes.

In truth, John feels like he's had all his strength cut out of him along with the lead, but he tries to sit up anyway, just on principle. "Have we had a new number?"

"Don't." Finch's voice is sharp, autocratic. His hand on John's chest is impossibly gentle. "You're supposed to rest. Doctor's orders. Another eighth of an inch, and the bullet would have destroyed your liver."

Finch has the bedside manner of a cactus. _They lied to you. I never will._ John can't help smiling.

"Is there something amusing about irreparable organ damage that I'm not aware of?" Finch asks stiffly, his expression grim.

"I'm just appreciating that eighth of an inch." He wants to laugh—would laugh if his belly weren't held together with staples. They must be giving him the really good drugs.

Finch regards him with a pinch between his eyes. "Is this your inexplicable sense of humor? Or should I have the doctor check to see if your brain has been deprived of oxygen?"

"The numbers?" John reminds him.

Finch answers after a beat, reluctantly, "There's been one, but it's under control. I have a security team watching the target, and Detective Fusco is making himself useful."

John can already feel his limbs growing heavy again, his eyelids trying to droop closed, but he still has to ask, "Is there anything I can—"

"No." Finch's eyes spark, almost angrily, and he clenches his jaw. "Do I need to remind you about that eighth of an inch? You will do nothing but rest and get better, Mr. Reese."

"You worry too much, Harold," John mumbles, or at least tries to, before he falls asleep.

* * *

John doesn't realize how much he's missed being useful until his first day back at the library. He punches in the code and enjoys the familiar rush of cool air as he steps inside, the pleasant, dry smell of old paper. He jogs up the stairs, feeling light and vital, strong again.

It's warmer upstairs, no doubt thanks to Finch, and John treads through the mostly empty anterooms, his boots thudding hollowly on the floor, until he reaches Finch's lair. He finds Finch in his usual spot, like a Delphic sibyl in front of his computer monitors, intently focused.

John sets a paper cup down on the edge of Finch's desk. "Anything for me?"

Finch slants a look at him. "If I had anything for you, Mr. Reese, I would have called." He takes a sip of his tea and makes a face at it. He always knows when John gets it from a cart.

"I'll just entertain myself while we wait then."

Finch glares. "Is that a euphemism for prying into what's none of your business?"

John walks away, smiling. He doesn't actually expect to find anything. When he checked the copy of _Ghost In The Machine_ again, the picture was gone, and he's never stumbled onto any other evidence of Finch's history. He simply enjoys walking the quiet rooms, soaking in the stillness of row after row of books, knowing that Finch is safely ensconced nearby, that this place is—the two of them are—a world all its own.

It's such an ordinary day, for them anyway, that John doesn't realize it's a dream until he returns to Finch and gets a closer look at the pictures on the wall. He stares, numb and chilled. Finch's gallery of failure, with its yellowed newspaper clippings and numbers of people who weren't helped, has been replaced by John's history of regret, a photograph of every person he's ever killed.

Alongside some of these photos, though, are others, a sort of counterbalance: Sam Gates in a Little League uniform with his father's arm around him, Theresa Whittaker and her aunt celebrating their first Christmas together in far too long, a smiling Megan Tillman without the burden of regret that weighs John down.

Of course it doesn't really work that way, John knows. There is no balance sheet of good and evil. One action doesn't overwrite another. All the family dinners, graduations, marriages, births, the minutiae of everyday existence that Mostafa Bostamy has missed—nothing will ever make up for that. But there is something oddly hopeful in the notion that one day John may have helped to save as many lives as he's taken. Maybe that's the closest thing to optimism a man like him can reasonably have.

"Are you finished with your trip down memory lane, Mr. Reese?" Finch's voice reaches out to him. "Because we have a new number."

John turns back to the business at hand. "Tell me." He's ready to get to work.

Finch starts to talk, and John tries to listen, wants to know, but the words all blur together, sounding further and further away until everything unravels.

When John wakes, he's not in the library, and the ache in his gut is still there. Possibly it's become worse. The antiseptic scent is gone, though, and the bed is wider, more comfortable than the hospital's. He scrubs a hand over his face and looks around to get his bearings. It's an ordinary bedroom: dresser, mirror, nightstands with lamps, a chair in the corner, carpet on the floor, a door that probably leads to a bathroom. Sun streams in through a double window, and John can see two-story homes across the street. The suburbs, he guesses.

He swings his legs over the side of the bed and grimaces. The good drugs have apparently worn off. He braces his hand against the headboard and has just managed to heave himself to his feet in an ungainly fashion when the door opens.

Finch appears, radiating disapproval. "You don't follow directions very well, Mr. Reese."

John flashes a cheeky grin. "I could say the same thing about you, Harold."

"I suppose you could, but since you're the one recovering from gunshot wounds—" He points at the bed.

John puts up only token resistance—the truth is that he's already burned through his strength with this little bit of exertion—and he eases back down onto the mattress. This is somehow more excruciating than standing up, and he needs a moment to get his breath back.

Finch comes close and leans down, apparently to check for blood, his forehead creased with concern. "Did you pull your stitches? Are you in pain? I'm not supposed to give you the next dose of your meds for another hour, but I could call the doctor—"

John shakes his head. The pills need to stop. He knows himself. He can't afford to become dependent. Finch does provide a helpful distraction, though. He's standing so close that John can smell the bright scent of detergent on his clothes, the warm salt of his skin. His breath puffs gently against John's cheek, and his mouth—

For a moment, John considers reminding Finch that kissing is supposed to make things better, but he decides they'll probably need to work up to that.

"No pills," John says instead.

Finch doesn't look particularly convinced by this display of stoicism, but he says, "All right, but I do have something for you." He disappears and returns a moment later with a cup of Jello in hand.

"My favorite," John deadpans.

"You will eat it," Finch announces, like the benevolent dictator he is, and hands over the spoon.

John eyes the unnatural jiggling redness. At least it isn't lime, he supposes.

"Harold, we need to talk," he says, between mouthfuls.

Finch studies him for a moment. "All right." He settles lightly onto the edge of the bed.

"Back at the parking garage, I was serious when I said—it was too big a risk, and you shouldn't have—"

Finch holds up a hand. "John. You rather seriously underestimate your value to this project, and I did not become a very wealthy man by being careless with what's valuable. So I'm not certain what there is to talk about."

He presses his mouth into a thin, mulish line. _I'm not going to abandon you_. John supposes there really isn't anything to say to that.

So he changes tack. "You should get some rest."

Finch has been there every time John has woken up—who knows how many days that's been—and he can't have been sleeping. He has dark, tired smudges beneath his eyes. His normally impeccable attire is rumpled, and he's still wearing a sense of strain in those lines around his eyes.

Finch gets to his feet, stubbornly. "Actually, I have some work to do."

"Harold—"

Finch lifts his chin. "Must I remind you that I'm your employer?"

John reaches for his arm and squeezes gently. "I was just going to say thank you."

"Oh." Finch mulls that over. "You know, Mr. Reese, if near-death experiences bring on professions of gratitude, then I would prefer never to hear 'thank you' again."

John smiles a lopsided smile. "I'll see what I can do."

"Eat your Jello." He pats John on the arm. "Then get some more sleep."

Finch settles into the chair, computer perched on his lap, and starts to type. _I'll be here when you wake up._ He doesn't say it. But then, he doesn't need to.


End file.
